


Silence

by Celuth



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game), Guild Wars Series (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 07:32:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9646466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celuth/pseuds/Celuth
Summary: An unnerving quiet falls in the jungle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Mordrem Guard Punisher from story mode.

A piercing roar shook the jungle. The very ground trembled and branches quivered. Birds erupted from the trees in great flocks, taking to the skies. Wild animals bellowed all throughout the land.

Then everything was silent. Frighteningly silent in the sticky, humid air.

He frowned, frozen mid motion. He heard nothing. Nothing at all. And slowly, the buzzing of insects returned. The rustle of foliage. The heavy breathing of the battered sylvari at his feet. Nothing else. He could not hear the voice. He could not feel the all-consuming desire to obey. He couldn’t feel the sickening pressure that arose when he even thought of questioning. It was gone. His sword remained held high above his head, ready to strike the final blow to the broken sylvari at his feet, but his delay wasn’t punished. The voice never told him to strike. He wasn’t visited by the maddening whispers. His arm shook.

The sylvari stared at him, fear in their eyes.

His sword clattered to the ground beside him. His arm dropped, weak and tired from holding the weapon high so long. He didn’t want to kill the sylvari. He hadn’t wanted to kill any of them. Once, long ago it felt, he had been one of them, maybe. It was so hard to tell. He’d had to obey though. And he remembered it all.

The sylvari breathed a sigh of relief and scrambled to their feet, clumsy with their injured body, and backed away from him. He fell to his knees in the grass, his grotesque thick plated bark crunching loudly. The sylvari picked up their weapon and regarded him. He hadn’t wanted to hurt them but it was his master’s will. His now silent master. The master he had fought so hard against at first, until he couldn’t bear it anymore. Until his weak mind finally broke. The sylvari looked as though they were going to strike him and in that moment he wished they would.

Wordlessly, the sylvari turned and limped away.

The silence lingered. There was no rebuke. He waited. His mind wandered to the sylvari and he thought more and more that he _had_ been like that. Had he had a name once? Did he have one now? _Yes_ , he thought bitterly. _My name is Mordrem._ Sickness rushed into his gut. He remembered the pain of fighting it. The struggle. It was so _hard_. But others had resisted, like the sylvari he’d just let go. How could they resist and he couldn’t? Why was he so _weak_?

His mind went back to all the things he had done, all the ways he had mindlessly served. His whole body quaked. He heard the shadows of screams in the back of his mind. But still, he heard no voice. He no longer heard the call of Mordremoth. He fell to his side, his obscene jutting shape tearing welts in the soft earth, and wept. He had served as the dragon’s slave and after that final moment, when he couldn’t take anymore and just given up, given his will to the monster, he had _wanted_ to obey.

He threw up in the grass, the thick smell of acrid mulch permeating the air. He couldn’t remember his own name but he remembered the Dream. Would it come back to him? Or was he now truly alone?

_You know your name_ , said a cold, bitter part of him. _Your name is Mordrem_.

He snarled a furious growl and pushed himself upright. He snatched up the sword that lay discarded to his side. His name was gone but he was not. He didn’t remember much but he recalled the thick, unwieldy armour sprouting from him like tumours. He remembered his previously waifish figure being engulfed in the horrific cocoon of rough, hard bark, taking from him everything that made him who he once was. He plunged the blade through his thigh and wrenched it sideways, screaming raggedly into the jungle as sap haemorrhaged from the wound. The bark cracked and splintered away, trying to grasp to the soft flesh beneath with thin, spindly tendrils. Water poured down his face as he sliced through them, severing the organic armour from his being.

He flopped onto his side again, wailing as pain racked his body. He twitched and convulsed as sap congealed on the grass around him. Eventually, the pain died down enough for him to sit up and inspect his leg. Underneath that one small portion of barky armour was a raw patch of soft and tender plant flesh. It pulsated with a rich glowing red. Deep in the back of his mind, a memory twitched.

He picked up the blade again, grit his teeth, and brought it down.


End file.
